The scene at the Press Club is absolutely mesmerizing and reeks of melancholy and irony. It almost feels like a Get Together (GT) for the Hazara race across Pakistan, chanting slogans and making peaceful demands to the government for protection. There are hundreds of people. Most of them have brought their entire families to this gathering, even newborns. There are no Orwellian Pakistanis to be found in their vicinity. Where could they be?

I stand with a handful of Hazara women who could otherwise be identified as Pakistani women accused of blasphemy, adultery, and fearing for their lives and honor. There is no safety net in being a Pakistani woman. The Hazara women have not a single frown on their foreheads. They have more important things to worry about. “Why didn’t any non-Hazari’ite come to support us? Where have all of the Lahoris gone?” No one cared.

Speaking of which, the agitation around the missing people subsided when we began to reason where our so-called supporters would be. It is ridiculous to even think whether any of them heard us. Why? Because at least 48% of them were too busy shitting in the waters of Indus while preaching to the local populace that cleanliness is half the faith. And you can bet that sectarian cleansing bears no exception to the polluted Hadith. The rejectionists, centuries ago, certainly had no shame when they were cutting off water supplies to the last remaining progeny of Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). Why would the present day capitalists have any shame?

Rimsha Masih

So, let’s not be too cynical about the remaining 52%. They must have had their reasons for ignorance and stupidity. Dr. Amina Wadud, Black-American Muslim scholar, explains this short-sightedness well: “The rubric in Islam is there is no intermediary between any person and God. Each person has equal access to God, and God has equal relation and connection to every person. That mandate has been denied because patriarchy has controlled not only the orthodoxy of religion but also customs and culture, and thus women have been relegated to a secondary role, and that role is encapsulated with theological taboos, as if to go outside the patriarchal role is going outside the religion.”

“I think, it’s not our religion they hate,” claims one Shi’a protestor from Hazara. He did not wish to be named. “Even if I am an atheist, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or Jewish, that still would not stop them from killing us. They don’t like the way we look. We have very peculiar physical features and a history that is too often associated with Mongols and the Afghans as if we are a race meant for elimination. They have profiled us that way, and when there is a match, they pull the trigger. It’s as simple as that.”

It was the Jurhumites who destroyed the source of Zam Zam – found by Hajra, a woman slave from Egypt and her infant son Prophet Ismail (Peace Be Upon Him) to avenge somebody else’s war – only to be rediscovered centuries later.